Friday, February 13, 2009

I wanted to pause this morning. Pause from client calls, document review, reading and responding to emails, to write about the plane crash last night.

50 people died from a plane crash in icy weather 5 miles from the runway at Buffalo's airport. The news media is doing their thing and stating the obvious, that this is a "terrible situation," that NTSB investigators will "pour over evidence to discover the cause" (Ice on the wing causing the plane to stall and go into a nose dive into a house), they will say every 2 minutes that "we don't want to speculate," as they speculate, and then later today or tomorrow we will be told that the investigation will take "a year." Neighbors will be interviewed, and "experts" from around the country will say their piece. New rules will come regarding I don't know, something about flying. The people who missed the flight or switched to another flight have already been found and told their chilling stories.

The timing of this plane crash makes some things obvious. It was a late Thursday night flight from Newark to Buffalo. What's obvious is that most people were going home. Home for the long weekend. Going home like this Florida law student. It was a short flight, meaning some probably didn't call their family to tell them they loved them, or call them about anything. A quick flight, skip and a jump, no big deal.

Now they're all dead.

I don't know who was on the plane, other than this law student and the widow of a 9/11 victim, but by the fact there were people on board means there were husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, kids, people going to celebrate something, people going to just see a friend.

A quick flight on an icy night, and now they're all dead.

These things bother me more and more. Maybe it's growing up, maybe it's having kids. I just can't imagine getting on a plane and never getting off.

I know a lot about flight, and airplanes having wanted to be a pilot in my adolecesent days. Bad weather makes for bad flights, and bad things can happen when a wing is covered in ice.

Anyway, just wanted to write a little about this crash (which will be referred to as an "accident" by the airline.)